Best of Interop - Look at the Categorisation

The “Best of Interop 2014 Finalists” have been announced. Pretty much all the products and technologies that you would expect, but I found the categorisation interesting. As you’d expect, there’s an “SDN” category. This year’s finalists are:

  • Application Policy Infrastructure Controller (APIC) for Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure – Cisco
  • Hydrogen – OpenDaylight Project
  • VMware NSX Network Virtualization Platform – VMware

But then look at the ”Networking” section. Finalists are:

  • Avaya – Avaya Fabric Attach
  • Cisco Systems – Cisco ISR 4451-X Converged Branch Infrastructure Solution
  • HP – HP Network Optimizer SDN Application for Microsoft Lync

The first two I expect to see there - a core (but innovative) networking technology, and a new hardware device. But what about HP’s SDN/Lync application? Doesn’t that belong under the SDN category? I think we’re going to see more of this in future - the controller and related parts falls under the SDN category, but the applications will be in a more specific category.

Sign of things to come?